Boogie Children
A new generation of DJs and producers revive the
spaced-out, synthetic sound of Eurodisco
It’s a Monday night on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and the subterranean 205 Bar is thick with illegal smoke. Mike Simonetti, the squat, long-haired ex-hardcore kid at the decks, has run the influential noise-punk label Troubleman Unlimited for more than a decade, releasing compellingly abrasive records from the likes of Wolf Eyes and Black Dice, yet there is no bludgeoning distortion or ear-scorching feedback tonight. Instead, as a battered mirror ball lights the dance floor, both hirsute downtown denizens and a handful of slick, loafer-wearing Euros move to the slow but steady kick-drum pulse of Simonetti’s selections, which range from ’70s camp (British funkateers Hot Chocolate) to au courant remixes (Swedish act Tiedye).
Welcome to disco in the 21st century: seedy, underground, and punk in attitude. “It’s great fun seeing all the white kids show up, jump around, and enjoy the disco music,” says Thomas Bullock, of DJ duo Rub N Tug, who began spinning at parties in ’01 with partner Eric Duncan after breaking from electroclash rockers A.R.E. Weapons. “The new disco drinks martinis. It’s sleazy, it’s heavy, and it wears shades.”
Long maligned and forever associated with polyester flares, Saturday Night Fever, and chest hair, disco is experiencing a worldwide renaissance, with
a flowering of new labels, compilations, and club nights. But it’s not the cheery, family-friendly style of the Bee Gees and KC and the Sunshine Band. The latest wave of boogie children are enthralled by the slick, synthetic swish of Eurodisco—from the
laser-beam pings and echoey sounds of instrumental space disco (Cerrone, Kano) to the glassy arpeggios and pristine beats of late-’70s and early-’80s Italo-disco, as pioneered by producer Giorgio Moroder (Donna Summer, the Midnight Express soundtrack; at left) and movie composer Claudio Simonetti (no relation to Mike). “Younger people are discovering it for the first time,” says Johnny Jewel, the Portland, Oregon–based producer/musician who plays in several Eurodisco-style acts (including Chromatics and Glass Candy) and co-runs the Italians Do It Better imprint with Simonetti. “It sounds fresh to them; they aren’t as prejudiced as older crowds.”
Following electroclash in the early ’00s and the more recent vogue for disco punk, it makes sense that Eurodisco would catch on with the indie set. “They like the Italo sound because it’s a darker aesthetic,” says Bullock. “All the synthesizers and drum machines appeal to the wonky white guys.”
Indeed, the Stateside nü-disco scene is filled with electroclash survivors like Bullock and former hard-core howlers like Simonetti, who admits that disco’s leprous reputation is partly what first attracted him to it. “I thought disco was cheesy when I was a kid,” he says.
But irony and kitsch can’t sustain a scene for long, and most nü-disco acts have come around to an honest appreciation of Eurodisco’s plastic pleasures. “It’s attractive, it’s different, it’s fun, and you can dance,” says James Murphy, who sprinkled Eurodisco tracks on his recent CD, Fabriclive 36, a collaboration with fellow LCD Soundsystem member Pat Mahoney.
On the other side of the Atlantic, where disco never really died—watch the Eurovision Song Contest for proof—there’s been a similar revival of the space-suited sounds of the Jimmy Carter years. Most Continental nü-disco releases are either more abstract (Norwegian stoner-disco producers Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas) or more poppy (Swedish thrush Sally Shapiro) than their American counterparts. “I like Italo-disco because of the neon feel and the melancholic atmosphere,” says Shapiro, whose 2006 Disco Romance album was a minor underground hit in the U.S. “It’s such a great style of music, and it died too early.” Consider the mourning period over. ANDY BETA
SPACE JAMS Five recent neo-disco classics
CHROMATICS
Night Drive
Italians Do It Better
With a frosty front-
woman, a dollop of
synth gurgles, and lots
of regimented drum-
machine ticktock, these
Italo-disco revivalists
offer a crepuscular
soundtrack for lonely
late-night highway trips.
RUB N TUG
Present Campfire
Eskimo
Recorded live at one of
their until-the-break-
of-dawn parties, this
mix CD of ultrarare
tunes leaves the
flaws—volume surges,
live chatter—but also
the druggy, hedonistic
atmosphere, fully intact.
METRO AREA DIRTY SOUND Metro Area SYSTEM Environ Dirty Space Disco East Coast disco dons Tigersushi Morgan Geist and This Parisian crew Darshan Jesrani lace their compiles a syllabus on productions with elegant quirky cosmic disco, swirls of strings and from avant-garde entries four-on-the-floor boogie. (German act Roedelius) It’s where handclapping to ecstatic pop moments U.S.-style funk meets (flamboyant disco chilly European rigor. queen Sylvester).
LINDSTRØM &
PRINS THOMAS
Reinterpretations
Eskimo
Space disco’s biggest
’heads remix their own
jazzy debut—think Air-
like ambience and dub
trickery—to hypnotic
effect, both tightening
up the loops and
tripping them out.
ILLUS TRATION BASED ON PHO TO BY GLENN A. BAKER ARCHIVES/REDFERNS/RE TNA
44 FEBRUARY 2008 WWW. SPIN.COM